Maybe. But the reality is that our early interests are fragile, vaguely defined, and in need of energetic, years-long cultivation and refinement.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI know that instructional time is a zero-sum game, but if we want kids to do well academically, it’s hard to imagine that happening if they don’t have some control over their attention.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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Psychologists call this the maturity principle. My own life experience fits this principle to a T.
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I would be surprised if my girls ended up as women without grit. I really would.
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I was a good novice teacher, but I did the things that were obvious.
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I know a lot of CEOs who are looking for three- to four-year varsity athletes – not necessarily because these people are going to be doing pushups or spiking volleyballs in the workplace, but because they’re looking for that continuity, that person who was gritty about something.
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Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
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I think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence.
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I will say that if my wildest dreams come true, I will, like, wake up one day, and I will be Carol Dweck, right? Because she is like everything I want to be.
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There are going to be peaks and valleys. You don’t want to let kids quit during a valley.
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If the quality and quantity of continuous effort toward goals matters as much as I think it does, we may actually get more productive, not less, as we get older – even if we can’t pull all-nighters like we used to.
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When people think of the word ‘drive,’ they often think you have it or you don’t, and that’s where we’re wrong.
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People who are really gritty – they’re still interested.
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Many, many individuals will report starting to form their lifelong interests around adolescence. Why that is, researchers don’t fully know. But if you can take a trip down memory lane and see what interested you, that’s at least a clue as to where your interest may begin to develop.
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Really, what matters in the long run is sticking with things and working daily to get better at them.
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I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my genes because I can’t do anything about them.
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I don’t think that every child in America is going to necessarily aspire to, you know, a four-year degree from a liberal arts college or a certain kind of life. I think that people should learn to be excellent in the thing that they choose to do.
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